London, ON – The Mustangs kicked off the 2020 portion of the schedule with a 6-4 win over Waterloo on Friday night.
The win snaps a five-game losing streak for the Mustangs dating back to before the holiday break.
"It's all about getting points and moving up in the standings," said Mustangs Assistant Coach Patrick Ouellet "Losing five in a row with a 28-game schedule is really tough so we know what we need to do to fight back into the playoff picture,"
The Warriors would open the scoring at 7:06 into the first period. After a Mustangs turnover, Waterloo's Connor Cole picked up the puck and fired a quick wrist shot over the glove side shoulder of Western goaltender Luke Peressini to take a 1-0 lead.
The Mustangs would respond just before the midway point of the period. Kenny Huether would even the score at 1-1 with a snap wrister from the slot, Anthony Stefano was the lone assist on the marker at 9:24.
Western would take their first lead of the game with 2:33 left in the 1st frame. Off the face-off, Cordell James dug the puck out to Ethan Szypula who then slid a pass to Franco Sproviero would bury the puck past Waterloo goaltender Trevor Martin. The goal was the Mustangs rookies' sixth marker on the season.
The Mustangs came out flying in the 2nd period. Rylan Bechtel got the Western lead to 3-1 with his 1st of the season at the 3:33 mark.
"I was just trying to get it on net there to be honest," said Bechtel "I was pretty happy about that, good to get the first one finally,"
Exactly a minute later it was Austin Osmanski who extended that to a 4-1 Western lead after Franco Sproviero got hit just inside the blueline and the Mustangs defenceman was trailing right behind and picked up the put and made no mistake.
Waterloo would come back with a pair of goals of their own add another of their own to cut the lead to 4-3.
After Szypula took a hit from behind late in the period that was called a two-minute minor for interference, Western would get their revenge when Kenny Huether fired a shot from just inside the blue line for his second goal of the game to take a 5-3 lead.
"That's a set play we run on our powerplay right there, we try to get a shot off the flanks that's been working for us," said Huether "It was quite a vital time in the game to get one there, especially to get one right away after a dirty hit there."
The goals came fast and furious in the second period as Waterloo would close the gap to 5-4 before the end of forty minutes.
Waterloo would put a heavy push in the 3rd period, outshooting the Mustangs 19-9 but it wouldn't be enough as the Mustangs would hold down the lead.
"We kind of knew it wasn't going to be pretty and it really wasn't," said Ouellet "The guys battled hard and we had a pretty good shutdown third period so we will look to take that into the game tomorrow night."
Western sits in a tie for 7th place with Waterloo in the West after the win tonight.
The Mustangs are on the road Saturday night with a trip to York to take on the Lions. Puck drop is 7:15 and fans can watch the action on OUA.tv.
